


Where We Used to Play

by NyxieBlack



Category: DCU (Comics), Shade the Changing Man (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Not Romance, Post canon, cw alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-09-13 07:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyxieBlack/pseuds/NyxieBlack
Summary: Takes place after the events of Shade, the Changing Man (1990). Shade and Lenny visit the graveyard of what was once, in another life, Hotel Shade.Partially inspired by the AFI song of the same name.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all! This is my first DCU (ish? Wonky canon stuff, whatever) fanfic, and my first published fic featuring Rac Shade, and I'm pretty happy with it! Hope you enjoy~

Kathy was dead. A deal gone sour, a man with a gun in the supermarket, and Kathy was dead.

That is, _Shade’s_ Kathy was dead. Hope against hope, his time machine plot worked. He was able to keep Troy Grezner from killing her parents, he was able to keep the police from killing Roger, he was able to prevent the long chain of events that lead to her premature demise. Kathy was alive now, but she was different. Some differences were to be expected. For one, this Kathy was less likely to pack up and go on a trans-America road trip with a reality-warping stranger wearing the body of a serial killer. The differences that bothered him, however, were the ones he didn’t know if he was imagining. Did she always hold her head that way? Didn’t her eyes used to be sadder? Was he a bad person if he missed that?

He heard a car pull up somewhere behind him. He didn’t turn to look.

The sound of leaves crunching underfoot came to a stop just beside him. “How long have you been here?” Lenny asked.

“Not sure. Maybe half an hour, maybe more.” Shade removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket held it towards her.

Lenny sat on the ground beside him. “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.”

Shade lit one for himself and took a drag, returning the pack to his pocket.

They sat in silence a moment, the building that was never Hotel Shade standing behind them. No angelic intervention to fix it up, so it was somehow even more dilapidated than when they lived there, but it was significantly less singed than when they left. In front of them was the graveyard. In front of them was the dirt and grass that never was and never would be the grave of one Kathy George.

It was Lenny who broke the silence. “Guess it’s useless to ask how long it’s been since we were last here. It’s weird to think that years of my life never happened.”

Shade looked at her. Her hair was shorn into a black bob. Her dark purple lipstick matched the rims of her sunglasses. The only time he’d ever seen her without makeup was at Kathy’s funeral, on this day, however long ago. “The answers would be different between you and me, anyways. I must have spent years working on that time machine.”

“Was it worth it? I mean . . . How’s Kathy?”

“Why don’t you come up and meet her? We live in Monta—”

“Look, Shade, there’s a lot of things I’ve done that I can live with.” Her sunglasses didn’t mask the intensity of her gaze.. “But I won’t be able to live with myself if I just pack up my things and go to Montana before finding Lilly. So . . . How is Kathy?”

“Fine. She’s going through a divorce right now--”

Lenny laughed. Her breath fogged the cold air. “Shade, since when were you a homewrecker? I must be rubbing off on you.”

The corners of Shade’s mouth quirked up. “Please, she and Roger had been separated for a while by the time I showed up. It’s been three months and I’m still sleeping on the couch. She said she didn’t want to rush into anything right now.”

Lenny made an odd face. “Guess she’s changed a bit, huh? It’s not like she used to be wild or anything, but she used to be more adventurous than that.”

“She’s asked about you, you know.”

“She has?”

“I gave her back her diary. She wants to meet you. Says that even though she’s never met you, it feels like she’s lost a friend.”

Lenny stared straight ahead, at the grave that never was. She swallowed. Rubbed her eyes, forcing her sunglasses up against her forehead for a moment. “Fuck.” She sniffed. “After she died, I saw her everywhere, you know that? Any woman on the street with the same hairstyle, and I’d think ‘There she is! She came back!’ I still see her everywhere and it _still_ feels like she’s dead and I _still_ hate you for it.” Her resentment hung heavy in the air. “Give me a fucking cigarette.”

Shade passed her the pack of cigarettes and his lighter. “It still feels like she’s dead to me, too,” he offered. “It doesn’t make sense when I see her every day, but—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Tears blurred his vision.

Lenny took a drag off her cigarette. “Since when did things make sense with you?”

He gave her a sad smile. “And I guess I shouldn’t be so upset about her changing, either.”

“Took the words out of my mouth.”

Shade let himself cry. _Really_ cry. It felt good, unlike in Ireland, with a poisoned heart and the untamable powers of Madness twisting reality. Hot tears rolling down his face, the cold air of spring bursting at winter’s seams, Lenny’s warm hand rubbing his back, trying to offer him some scrap of comfort. His Kathy was dead. He saw her die with his own eyes. He went to the funeral, saw her body in the casket, saw it lowered into the ground. But his Kathy was alive. She was living in Montana, in a house in the countryside, near her aunt and uncle. He saw her every morning. She went to AA meetings every Wednesday at 7. She drank tea from a mug with “KATHY’S COFFEE CUP” printed on it every night, before bed.

One night the two of them—Shade and the Kathy who was alive—sat together on the couch, her head resting on his shoulder. She was dozing off. He was letting the pictures and sounds of the TV wash over him. It was some movie from the fifties. _Invasion of the Body Snatchers._ Sure, it was technically Shade who was the body snatcher, but there was something he couldn’t get out of his mind from that movie--the way the people would insist that their loved ones had been replaced based on nothing more than intuition.

Early the next morning, before Kathy or George had risen, Shade left a note on the kitchen table, got in a cab, and boarded the next Greyhound for New York.

In the graveyard, the sun was creeping lower in the sky. Shade felt exhausted. Hollow, but a good hollow, as if what he had let go was weighing him down. He didn’t have powers anymore, but he felt as if he could float away.

Lenny stood up and stretched. “Shade, you remember that bar in town? Why don’t we go there. For old time’s sake.”

Shade stood up as well, bones crackling. “Sounds good.” As they were walking to Lenny’s car, he asked, “Do you have any change?”

Lenny unlocked the car door. “Yeah. Why?”

“I need to make a phone call.” He needed to apologize to Kathy and George for walking out suddenly, but Lenny didn’t need to know that. “I think you should talk to Kathy,” he added.

Lenny tossed the keys to Shade so he could unlock the other door. “Thank god we’re going to a bar, then.” He could hear the nerves in her voice. “I think I’m gonna need the drinks.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all! Didn’t expect this one to get a chapter 2, but I was working on Stereogram, and realized that spending so much time on Shade’s side of things was seriously unfair to Kathy, so I hope this rectifies things a little. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I write a bit about alcoholism here, and if I handled it in a way that could be considered insensitive to people dealing with this very real disease, please, feel free to tell me! Always looking to improve ^^

Kathy George sat in the kitchen of her rural Montana home, staring at the bottle of whiskey she just bought. The seal hadn’t been broken. She hadn’t even taken it out of the brown paper bag, but she had bought it, and she had bought it with the intention of washing away six months of sobriety. Music from an Ella Fitzgerald record drifted into the room. 

_Say, it’s only a paper moon_  
_Sailing over a cardboard sea_  
_But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me_  


Kathy had put it on for the anniversary of her father’s death. Heart attack, two years ago exactly. He was gone, but his records remained—Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra. He loved the greats. Kathy studied the wrinkles in the bag before her, the way the light glinted off what of the bottle peeked out. It wasn’t his death that made her an alcoholic. It didn’t help, but she couldn’t deny she had been heading this direction for years. A drink before bed turned into two turned into three into four into drinking to just get through the day. She didn’t have some traumatic backstory the way some in her Alcoholics Anonymous group did. Just depression and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. 

Her problem started to wear Roger down. They started having fights. First, they were just about the drinking. Those always ended the same, with Kathy apologizing and promising to quit, cold turkey. _Look, I’ll even pour it out,_ she’d say, and she would. Kathy always meant it when she said she’d stop but meaning it doesn’t make the detox any less shitty. She always started drinking again. The cycle continued, and she and Roger both got more tense. She didn’t know what Roger was thinking during the last few months of before they separated, but Kathy felt like he was always quietly judging her. 

Maybe she was just projecting her own frustration at herself onto him, resenting him because it was easier to do that than admit she resented herself. By the end of it, their fights were being triggered by the tiniest things. Kathy didn’t put the car keys back on the hook. Roger didn’t refill the ice cube tray. She and Roger stopped sleeping in the same bed, stopped looking at each other. The two had been separated for three months when, a week ago, the divorce papers came in the mail. Kathy couldn’t blame him, but she also couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt like hell. Kathy wrapped her hand around the neck of the bottle, lifting it out of the bag. She twisted the cap, breaking the seal. 

It had been a rough day. She had a rough day exactly a year ago, and she would have a rough day exactly one year in the future, too. Kathy stood up, holding the bottle. She walked across the kitchen linoleum, to the sink. And she started to pour the whiskey down the drain. 

Kathy watched the amber liquid spill across the stainless steel of the sink, running in a river down the drain. Kathy smelled the bite of the alcohol and felt a moment of regret at wasting nineteen dollars worth of liquor. Oh well. Three months was as far as she’d gotten without a relapse, and she was happy she didn’t have to start all over again. Not this time, at least. 

The bottle was already half gone. Kathy could tilt her hand at any time, halt the flow, keep the rest. It was a tempting idea. That’s when there was a knock at the door. Kathy jumped, dropped the bottle into the sink, emptying it even faster. Guess that was the answer to that. 

May as well get the door. 

* * *

Kathy slammed the door. Crazy. This was crazy. She should just walk away and hope her strange visitor would leave on his own. Call the police if he didn’t. 

“Kathy! Forget what your brain is telling you! Your brain’s telling you this is crazy!” The man insisted, from the other side of the door. “Your heart . . . your heart is telling you something else.”

Okay, fine. She opened the door, took the small grey diary from his hands, shut the door. She leaned against the wooden door and examined it. It was her handwriting inside. More than that. The turns of phrase, the fears, the questions. It was her, but a different her. Maybe the man was telling her the truth. 

Her mother always said she was crazy. Kathy found herself opening the door. She’d add this to the list of things her mother didn’t need to know about. Kathy looked at the man standing outside—tangled red hair, green eyes, wearing a white blazer with black targets. There was no question about it. He was the man who saved her, her parent’s, and Roger’s lives a divorce and a heart attack and a marriage ago. 

“You’d better come in,” she heard herself say. 

* * *

Kathy woke up one morning, three months later, in her bed, alone, same as usual. The previous night she had been watching whatever was on the TV with Shade. It was some black and white movie. She had been too tired to pay much attention, much less remember the title. When she had fallen asleep, Shade had jostled her awake, helped her to her room, and went back downstairs to his spot in the living room. 

Kathy crossed the hallway to the stairs, past the guest room that had been claimed by George, the teenage kid Shade insisted was their son from another timeline. When she padded downstairs, she noticed that the couch was abandoned, no Shade in sight. His absence wasn’t alarming at all. She assumed that he was out. Sometimes he took to wandering in the surrounding fields. He had a key of his own, given to him once the house had been emptied of all of Roger’s things, so he tended to drift in and out as he pleased. Passing the key to Shade, Kathy felt as if she was unlocking a new chapter of her life. She found herself wondering more and more what it would be like to take the plunge and start a serious relationship with Shade. 

For the time being, Shade didn’t have a job, but he kept the house clean and mowed the lawn for her, so she figured letting him sleep on the couch an alright trade-off. It was a big lawn, too. He tried fixing the broken sink about a month back, but when Kathy got home from work, she found one flooded upstairs bathroom, one water-damaged ceiling, and one apologetic Shade. 

Kathy shuffled to the kitchen. She opened the coffee machine, tossed out the old filter and grounds, and started a new pot. Toast in the toaster. She cracked four eggs into a frying pan—two for her and two for George. She thought it was strange that George didn’t resemble either of his alleged parents. Kathy still wasn’t sure if she believed that he was her son, but at this point it didn’t matter whether she believed. Her gut told her to play along, to accept whatever it was this strange duo came up with next. It certainly kept her from getting lonely. 

The coffee machine beeped once it was done. Kathy poured herself a mug. It was the one with “Kathy’s Coffee Cup” emblazoned on it. It was something her aunt and uncle always kept at their house, for when she’d visit. Once she and Roger had moved to Montana, they presented it to her as a housewarming present. Drinking from it whenever she could quickly became routine. She placed it on the kitchen table. That was when she saw the note. 

* * *

It was a little after 5, and Kathy was curled up on the living room couch with an Ann Rule paperback, futilely trying to make the words stick in her brain. Shade had disappeared three days ago, and all he left was a note saying he’d be back at some point, but he wasn’t sure when. And that he loved her. 

That note had been on her mind every waking hour, and in her heart churned a concoction of emotions. Sometimes she was angry at Shade. Sometimes she was angry at herself. Sometimes she was just hollow inside. He had left George with her, who was similarly frustrated. God, this was just like something that would happen to Kathy. She let two complete strangers live with her for three months—three months!—and one of them runs off, leaving her in charge of a teenager she supposedly gave birth to. Who told her he died of old age within the span of a couple months, turned into a coffee bean, was put in his father’s thigh for safekeeping, and then was put into the vacant body of the child of a woman named Lenny, who was once Kathy’s best friend-slash-lover, who Kathy found herself wondering about, lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling. 

Kathy didn’t find her living situation or her new roommates particularly out-of-the-ordinary once they had all settled into a routine, but now that she had a break to really chew on it, she saw that it was at least a little bizarre. She wondered what exactly took hold of her when she decided it was fine to let two total strangers who knocked on her door one night live with her. 

The phone rang from the kitchen behind her. Kathy considered getting it, but the longer it rang, the less she wanted to talk. Maybe she should just let the answering machine get it. It was on ring seven or eight when she heard the click of phone being picked up, and George’s voice saying, “Hello?” 

A pause. 

“Oh, hi, Shade.” Kathy turned. George continued. “Yeah, Mom’s here. I can get her.” George looked at Kathy through the kitchen entryway. “Mom! Phone for you!” 

“I’m not in the mood,” Kathy replied, tersely. 

George spoke into the receiver, “She doesn’t want to talk right now . . . Well, how did you think she’d take it? You really fucked up! . . . Uh-huh, I’ll tell her. Mom, he says Lenny’s there, and she wants to talk to you.” 

Oh. Lenny was the person from her old diaries she desperately wanted to meet, more than anyone else. The Kathy who knew her spent equal time writing about both Lenny and Shade—worrying about her relationship with Shade, scribbling down what Lenny said that made her laugh, keeping up with Shade’s fluctuating moods, wishing she could love Lenny like Lenny loved her. Reading those diaries, sometimes for hours, Kathy kept coming back to Lenny. Her best friend. Her lover. Her funny, blunt, adventurous Lenny. Kathy felt as though Lenny was someone she knew, someone she had always known, someone she had carried in her bones her whole life. And now that Kathy knew that Lenny existed, it was as if there was a large, Lenny-shaped hole that Kathy was just noticing. 

Kathy turned, looked George straight in the eye. “Give me the phone.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading! To clear some stuff up, if I had to pick between Shade/Kathy and Lenny/Kathy, I’m a Lenny/Kathy kinda gal 100%, but I’m trying to keep this as close to canon as possible, so original timeline Kathy is still straight. This lady—who knows? Maybe I’ll come back and write the bisexual Lenny/Kathy love story my soul screams for

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Critiques welcome <3


End file.
